︎

BREAD : 

a decentralized reading group & series of directives on body nourishment in physical togetherness




Responding to the question, what do you need? Laurie Kang, Heather Rigg, and Magdalyn Asimakis of ma ma are offering a malleable set of directives for reconnecting with interpersonal comforts and intimacies. Participants are invited to share a meal and read texts aloud together in small, simultaneous, loosely coordinated groups.

This program, entitled Bread, provides a series of directives as starting points for gathering together in a way that embraces intimacy while holding space for discomfort after months of isolation. This program will occur in multiple spaces and times throughout the day on Sunday August 1st, 2021, and can be run by anyone at anytime from there on. Bread is a free, fragmented, in-person program. The readings are suggestions, and what is read together can be decided collectively by each group, and participants are welcome to bring additional readings to share. If your group is unable to gather in person, you can meet online, read aloud together and share stories and feelings about the foods you are eating.

How to Engage


If you would like to host a session, please email and let us know where you are and what kind of session you would like to organize — i.e. an open or public session where anyone can join v. a closed or private session.

If you would like to be a participant, please email and let us know where you are. We will connect you with any “open sessions” near you. 

︎   Aden Solway  aden.solway@gmail.com
︎   ma ma  info@mamaprojects.net

Optional: deposit any artifacts, reflections, or documentation to the shared are.na board after your session.

Directives


  1. Gather with 1-10 close friends, depending on what is allowed where you are. Plan to stay for at least two hours.
  2. Bring some blankets to a park together, or another setting that works for all participants. Each person can bring food and drinks that brings them feelings of comfort, celebration, happiness, or other feelings that make you feel safe and excited about gathering with people again.
  3. Bring the attached readings and/or any others you want to share, perhaps something that helped or inspired you during the last year.
  4. Read one piece out loud, taking turns (one person per couple of paragraphs usually flows well).
  5. One person can speak about the food they brought and why.
  6. Repeat 4 and 5.
  7. Discuss what was just exchanged

Suggested Readings


I have to live (excerpts), Aisha Sasha John
"34 Grams", from A Mind Spread Out On The Ground, Alicia Elliot
My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts (excerpt), Amos Tutuola
The Four Onions (excerpt), Amy Lam
No Archive Will Restore You (excerpt), Julietta Singh
Woman At Point Zero (excerpt), Nawal El Saadawi
vestibular mantra, taisha paggett
Dictee (excerpt), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Further readings if interested


The Body In Pain - Elaine Scarry
The Archive and the Repertoire - Diana Taylor
Borderlands - Gloria Anzaldua
Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies - Renee Linklater


︎ PDF excerpts can be found here.

Themes


The body in and out of health: physical, emotional, spiritual; What nourishes, what constitutes the body: fragments, memory; Embodied memory; The sedimented nature of the body; the physicality of the body; Embodied trauma




About the instigators of Bread

Laurie Kang’s work explores the body as an ongoing process and environment. She has exhibited at SculptureCenter, Interstate Projects, Cue Art Foundation, New York; Oakville Galleries, Oakville; The Power Plant, Franz Kaka, Cooper Cole, Gallery TPW, and Carl Louie, Toronto; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran and L’inconnue, Montreal; Raster Gallery, Warsaw; and Camera Austria, Graz. Artist residencies include Rupert, Vilnius; Tag Team, Bergen; The Banff Centre, Alberta; Triangle Studios and Interstate Projects, Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College. She is currently studying Chinese Medicine towards certification as an Acupuncturist.

Heather Rigg is the inaugural Curatorial Resident of the Toronto based artist-run centre Gallery TPW, and is half of the curatorial collective ma ma.

Magdalyn Asimakis is a curator and writer. Her practice explores embodied experience in relation to Western display practices and methods of knowing, taking into account familial knowledge, folklore, spirituality, and generational trauma. She has organized exhibitions and programs in Toronto and New York, and co-founded the roving project space and collective ma ma in 2018. Magdalyn is a PhD Candidate at Queen’s University, and some of her writing can be found in Brooklyn Rail and Art Papers, where she is a contributor.


ma ma is a roving contemporary art space and curatorial collective in toronto, canada founded in 2018 by magdalyn asimakis and heather rigg.


About the curator of Economies of Care series

Aden Solway is an artist and curator. Trained as a historian, they have held positions across three continents, supporting projects led by The Art Gallery Of Ontario (AGO), Scotiabank Contact Festival, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Princeton University, The Art Institute of Chicago and York University. Over the last decade, they have maintained residency and fellowship positions at Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (Canada), Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto) and Cornell University (NYC). They are the founder of Closed Office, a research laboratory that investigates the myriad intersections of urbanism, performance and art. Send them pictures of your quarantine cooking on Discord.